'The Grandest Prix' is a Mario Kart game I invented with my friends, an inebriated gauntlet of all 48 Mario Kart 8 Deluxe tracks raced back-to-back, the total points tallied until an eventual winner emerges at the end of Rainbow Road. Over the past 10 years we've run it so often that raw muscle memory has replaced any sense of its many winners and losers. As a result, I promise you that it's not misplaced arrogance when I say that I know very few people who can meaningfully challenge me at Mario Kart.
So when Mario Kart World reared its head, I was keen to check it out. Not quite keen enough to spend $500 on a Switch 2 straight away - not yet, at least - but as soon as I could meet up with my fellow racers, I took it. Jumping straight into Knockout Tour, which I'd been reliably informed was the best way to get the most out of the new game, I thought I'd quickly settle into the rhythms I'd spent so long getting used to in Mario Kart 8. I was wrong.
The Knockout Blow
My Knockout Tour debut was a baptism of fire. Several factors conspired to leave me sweating, hands cramping around the Joy-Con just to get across the line in time for the first checkpoint at 20th place. For one thing, my beloved Yoshi Bike was gone, replaced by its nearest visual equivalent in the Dolphin Dasher. For a long time I've known exactly how to build and steer my favorite vehicle, but now I was learning a whole new one on the fly.
My woes continued as I learned to contend with not eight NPC opponents, but 20 of them. The increased size of Mario Kart World's races meant that relative safety wasn't as simple as just getting out ahead of the pack. I was hemmed in on all sides by such an eclectic roster of characters that it was all I could do to keep my eyes on the road. Even if I did manage to get slightly ahead, a dozen NPCs and their items conspired to bring me back to the pack. I was barely scraping through as the race reached its halfway point, scraping into 12th only by the rapid, clumsy spamming of several Golden Mushrooms.
It was at this point that I was finally able to breathe, the pack reduced to the size of a 'normal' race. I made it through the next two checkpoints with relative ease, even shedding a pair of my human foes in the process. But with only three racers standing between me and a debut win, I started to realize another problem I was going to have with Mario Kart World. Up until now, it had been a question of survival, but now it was a question of victory - except I didn't know the first thing about wallriding or grinding, had no idea where the shortcuts might be, and was yet to even really start to get to grips with the weight of the drifting in this new kart in a whole new game. I have basically every turn in Mario Kart 8 committed to muscle-memory, but in World I was driving blind, even as I approached the finish line.
In spite of all my missing expertise, however, I was nearing that line in first place. I wasn't going very fast - I was too afraid of spinning out to really commit to drifting, leaving my Dolphin Dasher at a pretty sedate pace - but I'd opened up enough of a gap to leave my one remaining human opponent some way behind me. I approached the final corner still in the lead, the finish line swinging out from my peripheral vision as I entered the final straight - only to howl in anguish as an NPC used a mushroom to jet across the corner and steal my victory from me.
The Deluxe experience
I took solace in the fact that there was nothing I could have done to have prevented that particular fate, and that at least I was the best human racer, even among our group of Mario Kart veterans. But I was also exhausted by the stress of Knockout Tour. Between the battle royale format, the unfamiliar tracks, a new kart, and the horde of CPU racers around me, I was a wreck, with no desire to head into a more sedate Grand Prix, let alone to start another knockout.
Instead, we returned to Mario Kart 8, my Yoshi bike, and the slopes of Mount Wario. Returning to the tracks I knew like the back of my hand and a kart I trusted to actually drift when I wanted it to, I demolished the field in my first two races back, basking in the familiar warmth of World's predecessor. So far, Mario Kart's Switch 2 outing isn't enough for me to make the leap to the new console, and I fear I've got plenty of practice to do if I'm going to build up the same confidence that I've developed with its predecessor.
